He might.
Marlow unfolded himself and sprawled over Cade’s body. He brushed a kiss over the sun-warmed, stubbled jaw, and Cade made a lazy, satisfied sound as he ran his hands up to cup Marlow’s ass.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said. “Do you still have job openings for nulls with training?”
Cade chuckled. “You aren’t the first person to ask me that,” he said. “Justin wants me to hire Piper. I turned him down, so there’s at least one empty slot. Why? Bennett looking to change careers?”
“No,” Marlow said.
Cade hesitated for a moment and then sighed raggedly. He cupped his hand around the back of Marlow’s skull, fingers tangled in the curls, and held him for a quick, hard kiss. It ended with Cade tilting his head back against the ground so he could search Marlow’s face.
“Maybe that’s a bit… soon?” he said.
It was.
Marlow didn’t care. He’d handed his notice in to O’Hara and left. It had been terrifying, and he’d nearly walked back in and snatched the incriminating resignation off the secretary’s desk
He’d also felt free, almost weightless. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like that.
“If I want to be with you, I can’t be Night Shift,” he said. “That would end with one of us dead.”
A hint of panic flicked over Cade’s face. “I mean, that’s a lot to put on the line,” he said. “I don’t want… I don’t want you to sacrifice that for me.”
“It’s not,” Marlow said. He ran his thumb over Cade’s cheekbone. After what happened with Piper, he’d just gotten better and gone back to work. He’d never thought about the fact that there’d been five cops at his apartment that night, that it had been Piper who shot him but not who dragged him naked to that car. Every day he’d gotten up and not thought about that. “I’m not. That’s the point. When this happened, you were the only person I had to call because I didn’t trust anyone I’d spent the last six years working with. I need a break from Night Shift, and that’s been five years in the making. You’re not the reason, just the one who made me realize.”
Cade exhaled.
“I just don’t want this to be something you regret,” he said.
Marlow leaned down and pressed a kiss to Cade’s ear, and then he whispered, “I could go see if Justin has work for me—”
He choked on laughter as Cade growled under his breath and rolled them over. The grass, coarser than it looked, scratched against his back as Cade glowered down at him.
“Not funny. You want to do something stupid and ill-advised; you do it with me,” he grumbled.
“It has worked so far,” Marlow pointed out. “I need something new, and maybe it could be working with you.”
Cade stared at him for a moment, his jaw set. “For,” he corrected stiffly. “You’d be workingforme.”
Marlow rolled his eyes and laughed. “You should see your face,” he said.
Cade’s face tried out a few expressions before he settled on resigned amusement. “Well, being a spectacular asshole has worked for me so far,” he said with a wry smile. “I didn’t want to change it up when things are going so well.”
“Maybe pull back a bit?” Marlow suggested. “I’m trying to—”
Marlow’s phone rang, muffled in the pocket of his discarded jeans. The habit of decades made him grab for it.
“It’s a text,” he said. “I’ll just… huh.”
There was a pause, and then Cade asked, “And?”
Marlow glanced up from the phone and snorted. “You remember I saved that pregnant woman?”
“Instead of staying out of trouble,” Cade said. “It’s on the list.”
That invited questions. Marlow didn’t indulge Cade by asking them. “Apparently she was grateful and called the station to get my name.”
“Another Kit in the world?”
